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Credit report heavyweight Equifax has warned that millions of people - including some in the UK - may have had their personal details stolen as part of a massive data breach. Info on exactly who's been affected and what you can do about it is sketchy so far, but here's what we know...

What is disgusting is that Equifax knew they were hacked for nearly 2 months before telling the public. So people can have had their identities stolen because of this breach yet be left in the dark as to why.

There needs to be a law in the US, UK and elsewhere that says if your personal information gets leaked, that you are told the moment the company who lost it is aware of it. I think the new EU laws replacing the UK DPA may address this but the US needs to get up to speed also.

If there has been UK data lost too as well as US data, Equifax needs to tell the UK ICO right now, yesterday even.

Of course those in the EU feel the need for a right to privacy. You tend to when you've been spied on and oppressed by fascists and communists in Germany and throughout Eastern Europe.

Redress is surely the fair comparison. We have toothless fines by the ICO whereas in the USA they in fact have hefty financial penalties for all corporates from HSBC's money laundering to the polluter in the Erin Brokovich film (a true story). Whereas we famously let Goodwin off the hook completely and another was let out after he pretended to be ill.

Please be polite to OPs and remember this is a site for Claimants and Appellants to seek redress against their bank, ex-boss or retailer. If they wanted morality or the view of the IoD or Bank they'd ask them.

What I think is equally amusing is that MSE only woke up to this on the 12th Sep. That's: 5 days after the telegraph story. 6 days after first reports. 6 weeks after Equifax knew 6 months after the hack If it were a new 0% balance transfer offer, you'd have know a week before it happened! Then the article MSE ran was titled : "Massive Equifax data breach - what you need to know" But by the end of the article I realised that MSE had no advice of any significance at all, so given the inevitable worry, maybe ignorance would have been preferable. If after all you are gonna run a stale article, at least bring something new to the party. I'm afraid to say it is a wakeup call. So called 'consumer champions' are only there for us when they can make a buck. On issues like this, they are irrelevant.

Although for those US citizens the site they set up to check if you were affected also required them to sign an agreement that you couldn't sue Equifax for their negligence, you had to do it via arbitration.

Thankfully this was pointed out and they backed down but it never ceases to amaze me how disgustingly these companies can behave.

But can we actually trust them? A company that has management that uses the time between finding out & letting anyone know to sell their own shares (even if they have now gone) is not one I personally would trust. They can't be the only ones that knew.

Also a company that is so incompetent that it employs senior people who use username & password "admiin" is definitely not one we should trust.

Oh, for sure we can't trust them (you shouldn't trust anyone). But the fact that they claim only non-secret data loss means there is pretty much nothing one needs to do (legally) to protect oneself in this regard.

Sorry I didn't explain myself very well. When I mentioned trust, I didn't mean trust in general terms. I meant can we trust them to have told the truth now. They have proved that they will lie & that they will try to cheat by getting people to pay extra to protect themselves from the results of their own flaws.

We have absolutely no grounds for trusting them to tell the truth or to protect our information or indeed to trust them not to try to charge us extra to protect the very data THEY lost.

The system in this country does not seem to have anything like enough teeth to protect us, so where do we go from here.

That's why I said there was nothing you were now legally obliged to do. They have told us the nature of the data lost. None of it can be classed as secret. Moreover none of it can be altered. There is therefore nothing we can or should do to 'rescue' the situation. If we are the subject of ID fraud as a result, a judge or jury is unlikely to conclude we could have avoided such a fate, based on this announcement.

If they have lied and the breach is worse, no judge or jury will blame us for taking Equifax at their word.

Of course, this may well be of little comfort to some. But what can we do when the world is beguiled by frictionless payments and contactless skinny macchiatos?

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